It takes moxie to tell a reporter the truth when you've been scamming the system, particularly if you're a civil servant.

But that's was happened in downtown Portland last week, when an IRS employee named Lynne admitted the disabled placard hanging from the rearview mirror of her Volvo was first and foremost to save her money.

She quickly added, as if honesty amortizes shame: "I'm not the only one doing it."

Well, thank you, Lynne. You really aren't the only one doing it. As Rose found, and as The Oregonian's Susan Nielsen argued in a column four years ago, the practice is widespread, a cynical punishment of those who really do need better access -- and worth millions of dollars in lost parking fees to the city.

We have suggestions. To the scammers: Cut it out.

To the city: Fix it.

We'll speak to the latter, because it's too depressing to consider able-bodied Oregonians going to their doctors and asking for a signature that wins them a free-parking badge whose use can displace a legless war veteran circling the block looking for a parking space.

Oregon law requires cities to offer free parking to vehicles displaying a wheelchair user permit. After that, cities are on their own to estimate the needs of citizens. But there are other kinds of disabled permits, because not all disabilities are offset by wheelchair use. And the Portland City Council compassionately saw fit years ago to extend to all pass-holders free parking of unlimited duration on metered, city streets. It's not uncommon now to see six or more cars on the same side of one downtown city block displaying disabled placards and leaving their meters empty.

Meanwhile, there are no extensive standards for Oregon physicians to follow before signing a patient's application for a placard.

In a separate back-and-forth with online commenters, Rose judged the City Council's policy-setting to be "naive."

That's one way of viewing it. Another is to consider it blind to an ugly reality it kicked over four years ago to a Disabled Parking Task Force, which hasn't fixed a thing because it apparently is worried about offending Portland's disabled community.

First-year Commissioner Steve Novick, born without a left hand, wrote in a recent letter to the task force: "The idea that more than half of the people with business in the core area of downtown Portland have disabilities that preclude them from using parking meters or other forms of transportation frankly strains credulity."

The council should wait no longer for task force fixes. The problem is runaway and now costing the city an estimated $2.4 million annually in uncollected revenue. Most of all it is an affront to genuinely disabled people who, we've come to believe, are more concerned with conveniently situated, open spaces than free spaces anywhere. That opens up several possibilities, among them a simple removal of parking space time limits for those with placards but who otherwise pay -- though we recognize the need to feed a meter could present obstacles to some. Those with wheelchair placards, meanwhile, could lawfully park for free.

We all have issues, surely. Few require free parking, however. There are multiple solutions to be considered. A few, taken seriously by a council that wishes to help rather than enable, could aid those truly in need and help to keep others more honest -- or at least get their meters running.